Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births)

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Outcomes

Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births)

Under-five mortality rate is the probability that a child will die before reaching age five. The indicator is reported as the number of deaths per 1000 live births. Child mortality includes infant and neonatal deaths and reflects the effectiveness of numerous essential services that children receive during their first years of life through primary health care systems, including but not limited to vaccinations, breastfeeding promotion, and nutrition counseling for mothers. This indicator captures more than 90% of global mortality among children under age 18.

Data Source Notes

Global Health Observatory (GHO). The Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality of Estimation which includes representatives from UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank and the United Nations Population Division, produces trends of under-five mortality with standardized methodology by group of countries depending on the type and quality of source of data available. For countries with adequate trend of data from civil registration, the calculations of under-five and infant mortality rates are derived from a standard period abridged life table. For countries with survey data, under-five mortality rates are estimated using the Bayesian B-splines bias-adjusted model.

These under-five mortality rates have been estimated by applying methods to all Member States to the available data from Member States that aim to ensure comparability of across countries and time; hence they are not necessarily the same as the official national data (GHO, accessed August 2015).

Notes

Benchmark: <25 per 1,000 live births by 2030, per the current Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets. This benchmark will be updated if SDG targets change.

The PHC Vital Signs indicators rely on third party data. To learn more about our data click here, or e-mail us at info@phcperformanceinitiative.org to provide feedback. Visit the Indicator Library for detailed descriptions of the rationale, construction, and limitations of indicators.